Film Review: Inherent Vice

Just tell me a story. It's not too much to ask, is it? Cinema is a medium for storytelling, is it not? The bare minimum requirement is that what you're watching tells a story, isn't it? Yes, I appreciate that there is a surrealist movement, and yes I appreciate that cinema is a visual medium so there's an argument that visuals count as much as an verbals, but even David Lynch is telling a story in his own weird way. And since we've had the facility to verbalise a coherent story since about 1925, I don't think it's too much to ask.

P.T Anderson's latest offering, Inherent Vice, frustrated the hell out of me for many a reason, it's strict adherence to a loose narrative form (oxymoron of the day, folks!) being one. Most frustrating, though, is that there's a really good, satisfying anti-noir (film blanc?) detective film buried in the layers of wilful fog and obfuscation.

I'm not stupid. At least, I'm fairly sure I'm not stupid (PM me to confirm, please). I can normally tell when a director's intention is to be deliberately unconventional, but this strikes me as the type of film that people say is brilliant because they're worried about sounding stupid if they say they didn't think it was very good. I'm not saying it's not very good, I'm saying that this could have been a very good film were it not for the unglued, meandering form and some serious self indulgence from Anderson. It's a beautifully shot, well acted piece with some truly brilliant scenes, and it does in fact tell a story. The issue is that the story is so filled with superfluous characters and detail that it's hard to care any more when it gets resolved. The point is that the film is meant to be experienced rather than understood, which is fine, but it's really unsatisfying considering how much investment you need to put in to reach the end.

Anderson, for me, has lost his way somewhat. He gets world-class performances from talented casts, but seems increasing insistent on telling loose stories. The Master looked great, featured some fine acting, but was a horrible film to follow. Scenes just followed scenes rather than caused them, with only hinted continuity and character motivation. Anderson could easily have told that story but instead he decided to just hint at one and let the audience do all the work. Admirable, maybe, but hardly enjoyable. After the brilliant Boogie Nights, the magnificent Magnolia and, er, Punch Drunk Love (Adam Sandler's best film), this started to happen with There Will Be Blood. He's gone from being Scorsese to being Terence Malick. Not necessarily a criticism so make of that what you will.

Melding styles as diverse as film noir and stoner counterculture is hardly new, and I promise this is the only time I'll mention The Big Lebowski here, but the Coens' film is much more satisfying because it sticks to a recognisable noir-ish structure, although filtered through a joint or two. There's no escaping expectation, especially when you so deliberately dangle genre bait in front of the audience, and the most satisfying thing about the detective/noir genre is the resolution; where all the jigsaw parts finally fit together. Well Inherent Vice is a 10,000-piece puzzle and chances are you're so frustrated by the time you finish the puzzle, you don't care what the picture looks like anymore. For examples of how this is done right, see Chinatown or LA Confidential (another distillation of a sprawling novel, given focus by sharp screenplay and direction).

The worst thing for me is that there's so much to like in Inherent Vice. PT Anderson, as always, sets his shots up beautifully and is a virtuoso of his craft. Where it isn't meandering between barely connected scenes, the screenplay is jaunty and funny, drawing fine performances from Jaoquin Phoenix, Katherine Waterson, and Josh Brolin among others. The individual scenes are memorable and enjoyable, with idiosyncratic characters and brilliantly realised L.A. Locations. There are shades of a sprawling Chinatown-like narrative about a missing property developer, which becomes more about the detective than the detection.

Ultimately, though, this is all put together in a way that feels like an omnibus edition of a sketch show in which Jaoquin Phoenix's character has another druggy encounter every episode. It meanders to a close, which is surprisingly sweet, told in looks rather than Hollywood platitudes. The only problem being that after 150 minutes of struggling to follow what's going on, you're unlike to care anymore. Unless, of course, you're watching it while high, in which case this is the greatest film ever made. I watched it sober, and I like stories so for me, it wasn't.

Poetry doesn't have to rhyme, songs don't have to be catchy, paintings don't have to be of anything, and films don't have to make logical sense, it's just that they're all much more satisfying when they do.